1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to hypermedia content delivery systems, and more particularly, to adaptive education delivery systems.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
The Internet is playing an increasingly significant role in the everyday lives of people. In this extensive information and knowledge diffusion context, users may differ in their training, motivation, technical abilities and tasks desired to be completed. The dissemination of a huge amount of information for a different category of people and of different levels of sophistication results in a lack of relevance of certain information for certain users. This is especially true in the case of a learning environment, where, to make the experience favorable to the user, it is imperative that adaptive hypermedia (“AH”) techniques be used to shield the user from extraneous information that might otherwise clutter his attention. The attraction of hypermedia for education lies in its ability to actively engage the learner in the acquisition and use of information, to support multiple different instructional uses (tutoring, exploration, research etc.), to support different learning styles, and to promote the acquisition of different representations that underlie expert-level reasoning in complex, ill-structured domains.
Unfortunately, several problems are encountered in practice. It is unlikely that all the learners will be similarly suited to the same pacing and sequencing. The learner knowledge can be widely different to start with and is likely to grow differently during interaction with the system. For the uninitiated learners, they can get lost especially if the domain is new and the corpus is large. Learners may fail to get an overview of how all the relevant information is related while browsing. In the absence of information that might help them formulate the goals and find relevant material, they may stumble through the corpus in a disoriented and disorganized manner, which is inefficient. In addition, the learner is not always going to choose an effective path through the information tree.
The introduction of adaptivity into educational hypermedia is aimed at providing the system with the ability to change dynamically according to the changing learners needs. In general, there are two conventional ways to introduce adaptivity in hypermedia systems, namely adaptive presentation and adaptive navigation.
Adaptive presentation allows the adaptation of the contents or the presentation of information included in a page. This itself can be of two main types. Adaptive multimedia presentation is designed to present the multimedia or the non-textual elements in the page differently. Adaptive text presentation methods offer the user additional information regarding the contents in the page.
Adaptive presentation examples include additional explanation techniques that allow pieces of information on a particular concept to be hidden or presented based on the user requirements. Beginners, for example, may need more explanation but fewer low-level details. Pre-requisite and comparative explanation techniques can modify the presentation of information regarding the concept, presenting what is relevant based on the user's level of knowledge. Explanation variant techniques can present the same information to different users in different forms, based on their preferences.
Adaptive navigation such as link-level adaptation support includes different techniques used in the AH systems to help the users navigate the content. Examples include direct guidance techniques where the system decides which is the next best node to visit. In adaptive ordering, the system orders the links based on a user model. With link hiding techniques links are hidden, removed, or disabled. In Adaptive annotation techniques comments on the link, which can be presented as text or as visual cues, inform the user regarding the contents of the linked nodes. Coloring schemes, for instance, can be used to show a particular preference. Map annotation techniques include different ways of adapting the pattern of hypermedia maps presented to a user.
The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (“SCORM”) specification defines a web-based learning Content Aggregation Model and Run-time environment for learning objects, and is well known in the art. It is basically a reference model that references a set of interrelated technical specifications and guidelines designed to meet the United States Department of Defense's (“DoD”) high-level requirements for web based learning content. These requirements include, but are not limited to, reusability, accessibility, durability and interoperability.
SCORM consists of three main sections: an Extensible Markup Language (“XML”)-based specification for representing course structures so courses can be moved from one server or Learning Management Server (“LMS”) to another; a set of specifications relating to the run-time environment, including an API, content-to-LMS data model, and a content launch specification; and a specification for creating meta-data records for courses, content and raw media elements. These specifications enable the reuse of Web-based learning content across multiple environments and products. SCORM standards enable small, reusable, sharable course content; discoverable learning content such as interoperable repositories; the ability to find and move entire courses; vendor support for SCORM-compliant off-the-shelf products; and the development of adaptive learning systems that can assemble content to meet the learners needs on-the-fly.